Bad Religion

I've seen these bumper stickers and t-shirts for several years now. I really don't know much about them except that I assume they are some modern band. They say in bold white (usually on a black background) "Bad Religion"... something that I suspect the owners of the t-shirts and the bumper stickers see as a rebellion against authority and the stupidity of their church experience. (I wonder sometimes if wearer's of these shirts have ever even been exposed to "church".)

Maybe for most of them... it is just the name of a band they like, not some statement about the "church" of our day. But I think for most it must be a little of both. What that band must stand for.

I know that years ago I would react to this bands name wrongly. I looked at it like an attack on something these people had mis-understood. But now, I think maybe, they were seeing some things more clearly than I was.

You see, most of what is called "religion" these days is nothing more than man-made garbage in my opinion. Meetings... rituals... cloistered little communities that think their spiritual gifts are meant to be use on Sundays (and Wednesdays) inside the walls of a "sacred building". Balony! We are supposed to live our "religion" in the world!

look how religion is descibed in the Bible and tell me how this fits the rigorous and demanding calls to serve programs and men on platforms on Sunday Morning!...


1 Timothy 5:4
But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

James 1:26
If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.

James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.


If we have to use the word "religion" at all... it should describe what these verses are talking about, not the building of some mini-empire for some well-meaning but misguided organization built by human hands!

Personally I think there is more relationship to "religion" than any kind of institution can provide. -- Ever!

Next time I see a kid wearing a "bad religion" shirt, I think I will ask him what he things religion is... or what is so bad about it... and I will probably agree with him if he defines it in the common terms of "religion" in America today! Maybe it will surprise him that a Christian would agree that all of that is "Bad Religion". Maybe God will use me to interest someone in a relationship to God... and learn the real meaning of "religion".

I hope so.